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The Great Hunting Ground/Lore
This is a repository of supplemental material for the map game The Great Hunting Ground. City details (culture, history etc) Plymouth Formed early in the Golden Age of Traction Cities, the former static port turned enthusiastically to Municipal Darwinism with the danger of early predators. Attaching flotation foam to the bottom, and its notable gigantic paddle wheels on each side to ensure speed, Plymouth became one of the earliest and one of the largest raft-cities, with three tiers housing over 100,000 people. With the rise of raft-cities to escape land-cities, Plymouth became feared across the seas, with its "traction-skiffs" scouting far ahead to help ferry in prey. With its size and innumerable resources at its disposal, Plymouth often makes treks across the oceans, being one of the few raft cities to traverse the once-Indian Ocean and back to Africa without succumbing to the wrath of Anti-Tractionists. Plymouth relies on trade and eating up fishing towns for its survival. It is notable for the pre-Sixty Minute War lighthouse on its third tier, which serves as a watchtower and landmark. Plymouth's economy relies on fishing, achieved through its extensive fleets of boats that scout out from the city; prey, achieved through its considerable speed and low-paid workforce which powers its engines; and weaponry, with a successful arms business owned by the Plymouth-based Dahl Agency. Although primarily a predator city, Plymouth often trades with land-based cities, as they have no way to eat each other; trading everything from slaves to weaponry. Plymouth's culture is predominantly "middle-class", with a world-famous aquarium that houses a variety of sea creatures. The lower classes or those unfortunate enough to be homeless are sent to work to the engines for food and shelter. Its diversity is limited to say the least, in part to its policy of tight security and searches on any landing airships. Plymouth's mayor, August Bishop, rules the raft-city with a "firm and conservative hand", rarely altering their routes across the seas; which has been criticised as Plymouth's prey becomes more scarce. Zugstadt-Kaprun A trader and scavenger that eschews the traditional tiered school of traction city architecture, consisting instead of a large train of wheeled carriages with no engines of their own, towed by a large frontal engine block. It mostly traverses the European stretches of the Hunting Ground but every few years an excursion is made to Africa or the arctic to pursue alternate trade opportunities; it has even been known to skirt the borders of Shan Guo and Zagwa, though such audacious expeditions are typically met with cold shoulders and the occasional passive-aggressive exchange of near misses with heavy artillery. Governed by an elected Central Executive, headed by a General Secretary. History Originally a tourist resort in a bygone age, than a refugee camp after the Sixty Minute War, then a trade hub for much of central Europe through the Black Centuries and the early Traction era, Kaprun remained static until well after the Second Traction Boom. Motorised cities and Municipal Darwinism were dismissed as a ridiculous fad that would fall out of favor before it spread beyond the largest municipalities, which would never be able to navigate the mountains around the town to devour it. Of course the phenomenon persisted despite the insistence of several generations of Central Executives that it would all blow over; at first the small predators that could fit through the surrounding valleys were driven away or destroyed but the cost to the Landwehr was invariably devastating, leaving the city increasingly defenseless as approaching towns became more numerous. By 598 TE even the most ardently opposed politicians had to concede that the time had come to mobilise. The mountainous terrain that had failed to protect Kaprun would now impede its escape, making conventional single-chassis tiered layout impractical, so the town was rebuilt into mobile segments small enough to maneuver through the mountains which were then linked together into the unorthodox land-train design. The former municipal power plant had been built around the enormous reactors of an ancient war machine, a distant conceptual ancestor to the traction fortress and by extension the traction city; its long-lost mobility was hastily restored to create the Locomotor Car that would tow the city across the Hunting Ground for the forseeable future. Culture Kaprun's society is appropriately diverse for a trading city. Merchants arrive from all over the world to sell their wares for a fortnight, a year, a lifetime or anything in between; bankers and financial advisers from every school of economics help buyers and sellers alike to keep afloat; all flavours of artists and performers seek commission to produce novel advertisements; and of course there are the consumers themselves, natives and tourists alike, a broad range of people drawn by a broad range of desires to purchase a broad range of products. Such is this miscellany that the city's stalls, shops and bazaars have never been known for a single type of product; on the contrary Kaprun is most widely known as a place where you can buy virtually anything if you're willing to look hard enough for whoever’s selling. With its habit of slowing to pick up drifters and nomads from the Hunting Ground, and of welcoming almost any willing immigrant from static hamlets ignored by the larger predators and the various farming towns and scavenger platforms that cross its path without fear of being consumed, Kaprun has amassed a disproportionate population of eccentrics and crazies; in light of this it should be no surprise that the town is shot through with cults and sects. Machine worshippers organise monthly pilgrimage to the Locomotor Car (and trespass there every day) to pay respects to the ancient reactors and supercomputers. Hermetic orders shroud themselves in the mansions and mock castles of affluent citizens, claiming to seek revelation in arcana but more often finding it in drug-fuelled orgies. Dark rumours abound of hidden rooms with more than five and fewer than six walls, where memory is the food of the gods. In any other town the Necromonicon, Lewis Carrol's Slayer's Testament and the collected hymns of Edward Dickinson would be mere curiosities, already ancient even before the Sixty Minute War, likely gathering dust in a university library; in Kaprun, these texts and many others like them are alive and well, sung and shouted in competition to anyone who will listen to one of the hundreds of ever-enthusiastic street preachers. With its powerful old-tech engines and the high concentration of valuable goods in its cargo holds, Kaprun has unsurprisingly been a frequent target for predator cities in the past and its unorthodox design has often led to the rearmost segments of the train being eaten before the pursuer was forced to break off for some reason. In light of this the wealthier citizens tend to live in Habitation Cars closer to the front - but not too close, keeping a buffer between themselves and the toxic smog and cataphracts of radiation that endlessly vomit forth from within the armour of the Locomotor Car. Historically some particularly ruthless General Secretaries have been known to order that the rearmost cars be deliberately cut loose in the hope of appeasing a predator while also gaining speed to escape from the loss of deadweight, but this tactic is disliked by the general population as the construction of new cars on the move is a slow, dangerous and horrendously expensive endeavour. Lichfield Lichfield is a medium sized town of three tiers that adamantly says it's a city, mostly a traveling trader with no discernible route it turns up here there and everywhere. Before mobilising Lichfield was a moderately notable trading post in the Midlands Wastes and a few miles away from the Birmingham crater making it a hotbed for old tech trading, due to its position to London a considerable amount of resources for the larger cities mobilisation came through it and like so many others took lead from London and became one of the many settlements to mobilise using cloned copies of the Godshawk land engines London used and is belived to have mobilised approximately in 492TE in obvious lieu of London and other large cities like Paris. The main identifying feature of this city is the large cathedral with three spires balanced precariously on the uppermost deck, this building once believed to have been a Christian temple it is now home to a Harri Poter convent and the city's wheelhouse and bridge. This is keeping in line with what makes this city so unique. In that a considerable number of its buildings are believed to be buildings from before the Sixty Minute War. Such as the cathedral, cities guild hall and the building serving as the main air dock, which historians believe to have been an ancient ‘Rhailwhay’ station. As stated the Cathedral houses a Harri Poter Convent and its Acolytes are a major tourist attraction as the religion declined steeply after the rise of tractionism, its large banners of “PROPHET HAGRID WELCOMES YOU“ and miracle claims of healing though the lost art of Expelliarmus bring in large swathes of punters and even starred in the Pennyroyal book The Scar Head Acolytes. Although their random attempts of unlocking broom flying regularly annoy the steering committee who occupy the front of the building. (Have you tried steering several ten thousand tons of city with cultists flailing past your window?). Its current mayor Miss Sayleth has sometimes been criticised for allowing them to stay but her showmanship knows no bounds, much to the displeasure and constant frustration of Mr Atwater who once had to donut the city at a moon festival and put up with the ridiculous notions of barrels of bubble liquid being dropped from airships. Another aspect of the city is its agricultural trade, much of the lower deck is festooned with the anchoring points of about twenty floating platforms that are used for growing food above the smog and in the sunlight. Mr Shallot and family run these on behalf of the city with the excess produce being traded for fuel or resources with other cities in his idiotically large dirigible, for a grocer that is, the Jersey Royal which looks uncannily like a potato, eyes and all... Evonia Evonia is a single traction city quadrifurcated into four smaller towns, which can either operate as one unified city or divide into four separate and individually manoeuvrable towns. When operating as a single unit, Evonia has seven tiers, although it is very non-densely populated and has a population more comparable to that of a four-tier town. Each of Evonia's tiers is perfectly square and situated exactly above and in the middle of the one below. A central pole and lift shaft runs through the centre of the city, connecting Tier 0 and Tier 1 to Tier 7 (the equivalent to London's GUT) and the catapillar tracks that support the city when operating as a single unit. Tiers 3 through 6 are divided into four quarter sections and are not welded to the central pole; rather, they are attached to one another on their layer by hydraulic pumps that can be controlled from Tier 0. Caterpillar tracks for the four sub-towns are attached to bottom of Tier 6, and Tier 7 and the four sub-town's guts both exist on Tier 0, with Evonia's gut in the centre and the towns' guts away from the centre. Initially built as a refuge for intellectuals dissatisfied with the pragmatism of the Black Centuries, the original Evonia was a region the size of a county, with four static towns: Glastieve, Sarnau, Askana and Acteriendia. Well into the Traction Era, the Central Curia of Evonia voted 6 to 4 to mobilise and become a traction town. None of Glastieve's four representatives agreed to the scheme, and a static town there remains. The others, and a number of engineers who decided to form a New Glastieve aboard the city, create the four sub-towns to preserve their regional identities.